The Week

Shanna Hullaby

Students at Berkeley City College gear up for the March 4 Day of Action Wednesday. BCC will send three busloads of students and 50 students by BART to a 5 p.m. rally Thursday at the Civic Center in San Francisco.

News

Berkeley High School Principal Jim Slemp, whose tenure was sometimes marked by controversy and contentious relationships with parents and teachers, announced Wednesday morning he was going to retire in June.
-more-

Records from the state Office of Traffic Safety show that Berkeley has consistently been one of the least safe—and in some cases the most unsafe—places in California for bicyclists and pedestrians for the last several years.
-more-

Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley was named special advisor to UC President Mark Yudof and UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox Friday to help resolve recent acts of racism on the UCSD campus.
-more-

UC Berkeley—where the idea of the March 4 Day of Action incubated last October—erupted into a riot of noise and colors Thursday afternoon, when more than 1,000 people marched from Sproul Plaza to Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland.
-more-

Schools, classrooms, corridors and cafeterias in Berkeley are buzzing with excitement over the March 4 Day of Action in California. An idea born out of the Oct. 24 education conference at the UC Berkeley campus, Thursday’s rally has evolved into a statewide movement to protest budget cuts, fee hikes and furloughs in public education.
-more-

Three Berkeley High School science teachers, Matt Bissell, Matt McHugh, and Kate Haber, say that they were astonished to learn that Principal Jim Slemp has concluded that a well-regarded fellow science teacher should not be re-hired for next year. They told the Planet that in protest of the principal's action, BHS science department teachers walked out of their staff meeting on Monday morning and marched en masse first to the principal's office and then to the office of the district superintendent.
-more-

The Berkeley Police Department announced Tuesday it will focus on pedestrian safety in March in honor of Zachary Michael Cruz, who was killed in a collision while walking to an after-school program Feb. 27, 2009.
-more-

On the same day Black students at UC Berkeley stood in solidarity with their peers at UC San Diego to condemn racist acts on campus, a KKK-style hood was found outside UCSD’s main campus library.
-more-

Although some UC Berkeley students have linked the recent acts of vandalism on a Telegraph Avenue Subway store to discontent over lease negotiations at the Bear’s Lair Food Court on campus, Berkeley police said Tuesday that the intent of the vandals was still under investigation.
-more-

Opinion

Editorials

This week is education week in California. All over the state, especially on Thursday, there are demonstrations planned to protest the cuts in funding and tuition increases which have been made necessary by the legislature’s inability or unwillingness to allocate the money which is needed to support even a modest amount of education. Sob stories abound at every level. Shocking statistics comparing California unfavorably to the poorest, most benighted states in the union are all too easy to find.
-more-

Public Comment

Last week I watched the Healthcare Summit with many people in mind. After a year of working on healthcare reform I’ve met many local residents who have been failed by our healthcare system. They include a man who watched his parents, janitors who had saved for years to buy a home, loose that home due to medical bills resulting from his mother’s diabetes. And a cancer survivor who can’t get health insurance due to her pre-existing condition. Now she forgoes regular check-ups to see if her cancer has returned. If it does, she’ll have few options.
-more-

Please help to defend public education Thursday, March 4th by rallying at 2134 MLK Jr. Way beginning at 3:3opm. As educators across the state of California plan events on March 4th to defend public education, President Obama is proudly claiming that the firing of teachers at a Rhode Island High School is sound education reform and a necessary form of accountability.
-more-

Every once in a while, a member of the local Berkeley elite will reveal some useful information about his or her true character. We were treated to just such a moment in the publication of Will Travis’ letter about the mayor’s latest plan to help developers speed up the planning process (“New Downtown Plan,” February 18, 2010). While Mr. Travis couches his remarks in ironic humor, the arrogance of his attitude nevertheless shines through.
-more-

As a British-born resident of the United States with family in both countries, I followed Tony Blair's testimony before the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry in London (January 29, 2010) with a morbid fascination.
-more-

Riya Bhattacharjee's article on the Downtown Plan in the February 25-March 3 Planet presents a factually inaccurate picture of the differences between the Downtown Plan adopted by the City Council last year and the plan adopted and sent to the Council by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) in 2007. She says the Council adopted a 225' maximum while the DAPAC plan "suggested" a 120' maximum.
-more-

EDITOR’S NOTE Rob Wrenn’s rant stands as proof of his assertion that “some of the opinion is poorly thought-out or poorly written, or, worse, full of misinformation.” The entitled attitude he exhibits is breathtaking. He shows his naivete about journalism by his suggestion that newspapers—any newspapers—have the time or money to employ factcheckers. Factcheckers, in the olden days, used to be people who worked for the New Yorker and a few similar select lavishly staffed magazines, but even the New Yorker makes its share of mistakes in the brave new world of the 21st century. Newspapers have always had a few mistakes, and they always will. The New York Times’ correction column is one of the most entertaining and well-read parts of the paper. And anyhow, this story was correct. Wrenn confuses an accurate report of what was actually said at the last city council meeting, which was recorded and is available online for anyone to check, with what he thinks should have been said or hopes was said. Given the self-righteous tone of his ill-informed and ill-mannered demand for “correction”, I have asked the reporter to set him straight below: -more-

Columns

Wrong, indefensible, and inexcusable. That’s the best way to describe the actions of the Dellums Administration surrounding what appears to be the unequal and outright discriminatory parking ticket practices city administrators put into effect in Oakland this summer and fall, tried to pretend they didn’t, and then blamed on the City Council.
-more-

A heavy-handed crack down on Israeli dissidents is drawing sharp criticism by human rights organizations and at least a mild judicial slap on the wrist for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The authorities are targeting such groups as B’Tselem, New Israel Fund (NIF), the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), as well as foreign activists in the occupied West Bank.
-more-

Arts & Events

When I found out that the director of a current production of Caucasian Chalk Circle had been the Tony Award winning director of the Broadway musical Sweeney Todd. I wondered why no one I knew in the International Brecht Society hadn’t advised directors that doing Sweeney Todd (a murder revenge musical) was a learning process for anyone tackling a gigantic play with enormous historical importance like Caucasian Chalk Circle (derived from Augsburg Chalk Circle, Chinese Chalk Circle and Solomon’s biblical choices). John Doyle at ACT coaxed by Corey… the producer/director and publicist certainly knows her Brecht and how to prepare.
-more-